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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26344336">Early Mornings and Trust Issues</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ricericerat/pseuds/Ricericerat'>Ricericerat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Saioumota Week 2020, Trans Saihara Shuichi, also nothing but a single sentence about him being trans but i like to yell it into the void, day 6 - domestic/intimacy, i want to bonk him on the head, nothing about college tbh just that they live together, ouma centric, this title is a joke my friends need to stop enabling me</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:27:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,483</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26344336</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ricericerat/pseuds/Ricericerat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ouma thinks about last night, how he heard Saihara’s voice shake as he was about to enter the kitchen. It was easy to tell with Saihara, it has always been. Ouma always knew how close he was to bursting into tears with the slightest change in his tone. He peeked inside from the kitchen door to witness Momota taking his hands inside his own in a firm grip and Saihara’s tears starting to spill and thought, ‘Yup, time to go fake being asleep on the couch!’</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Momota Kaito/Oma Kokichi, Momota Kaito/Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi, Momota Kaito/Saihara Shuichi, Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>195</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Early Mornings and Trust Issues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/inspectorwired/gifts">inspectorwired</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Ouma Kokichi is allergic to emotional vulnerability and in this essay I will-</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ouma wakes up to a mouth full of hair. </p>
<p>It is dark, short and doesn’t taste like it spent a whole day inside a bucket of hair gel. Saihara, he notes as he spits it out. He pulls his arms away from where they are wrapped around Saihara’s waist with a sort of relief that neither of them is awake to witness the position he is in. Some part of him that is starting to feel more awake each passing second reminds himself the obvious. It wasn’t that he meant to fall asleep cuddled up to him. Who would be able to blame him when the blankets were already claimed by the two idiots. He had been cold, he reasons. Wrapping himself around Saihara had simply been the easiest way to seek warmth. </p>
<p>He slowly rolls away to the edge of the bed. There is not enough light in the room to signal that he has to get up for his classes yet but he can feel his hair uncomfortably sticking out in every possible direction and the taste in his mouth is quite offending. He reluctantly gets up on his feet and almost lets out a noise of discomfort with how cold the floor feels against his skin. Looking around, the only solution he finds is the pair of slippers left next to the bed. They are soft and his feet finally feel warm but they are also entirely oversized for him, which is no surprise. The guy is twice his size in every way and Ouma thinks his bones could use a few centimetres less as he gazes over at where he is sleeping soundly with Saihara pulled close against his chest. </p>
<p>He makes his way into the bathroom, careful to close the door quietly. There is no power that can wake Saihara up this early in the morning, especially when he is this exhausted, but he can’t say the same for Momota. Once inside the bathroom, he makes a poor attempt of settling down his unruly hair and gets to brushing his teeth. His reflection in the mirror is far from ideal with eyes that easily give away his lack of sleep. Despite not knowing the time, he can more or less guess it has only been an hour or two since he went to bed. He hurriedly rinses his mouth, the taste of Saihara’s toothpaste is never pleasant. It has too strong of a mint flavour for anyone to voluntarily put it in their mouth. Anyone but Saihara who is already insane enough to down two cups of pitch-black coffee every morning. He curses himself for forgetting to add his brand of toothpaste to the shopping list when Momota asked him if he wanted anything from the store yesterday. Naturally, he uses the superior kind, strawberry flavour that tastes so sweet that makes you wonder if you can get a cavity from the toothpaste itself. </p>
<p>He watches the water pour from the tap until it gets warmer to wash his face. Blindly reaching for his towel fails him when he realizes he has no idea where it is. Instead, he grabs the nearest one and wipes his face dry. Regret is what he feels in an instant when he is surrounded by the awful smell of that stupid shaving cream Momota uses because he thinks it smells manly. It is a wonder how Saihara can even kiss his cheeks right after he uses that. He throws Momota’s towel away and heads out of the bathroom. </p>
<p>He is looking at the bed, trying to decide if he should try and get a bit more sleep when his eyes fall on Saihara’s face. It is easy to see the stains of dried tears if you look closely and Ouma is overwhelmed by an emotion he refuses to acknowledge as guilt. It’s not his fault, really, it is no one’s fault that Saihara has what Momota likes to call bad days and what he calls breakdowns. The way he is instantly out the door as soon as there is any mention of feelings is, however, undoubtedly his fault. They have never really confronted him about this before if he doesn’t count the few times Momota offhandedly made some moronic comments such as, “It’s not like we are hetero people bro, we can talk about our feelings.”  Saihara, on the other hand, has never made a single comment about any of his lame excuses he uses to get out of certain situations. He knows he isn’t fooling him, his lies are a lot more transparent in Saihara’s eyes than he’d like them to be. Yet he still turns a blind eye to the distance Ouma is working day and night to maintain between them. Is it out of consideration or fear, that, Ouma doesn’t know. </p>
<p>He thinks about last night, how he heard Saihara’s voice shake as he was about to enter the kitchen. It was easy to tell with Saihara, it has always been. Ouma always knew how close he was to bursting into tears with the slightest change in his tone. He peeked inside from the kitchen door to witness Momota taking his hands inside his own in a firm grip and Saihara’s tears starting to spill and thought, ‘Yup, time to go fake being asleep on the couch!’</p>
<p>He expected to lie there until the whole deal in the kitchen was over and someone would come to carry him to bed. It was a rather common occurrence, Ouma falling asleep on the couch. He’d always wake up in the bed, trapped with his boyfriends lying on both of his sides, a mess of arms and legs wrapped around him. How insidious it was of them to use his asleep state to cuddle him, without hearing his usual snide remarks.</p>
<p>However, last night didn’t quite play out the way he expected. He was left abandoned on the couch when he heard Momota drag Saihara into the bedroom and close the door, not that it blocked the sound of loud sobbing that came from behind it.</p>
<p>With thoughts about last night still roaming in his head, Ouma takes a step towards the bed. The room feels slightly brighter now and the sun is hitting the back of Saihara’s shirt, which quite obviously does not belong to him. Its colours are faded, hem stretched beyond repair and it looks oversized enough on him that it can’t belong to anyone but Momota. With the way he is sleeping the hem rests just above the scars on his chest, slipped down enough to expose a shoulder. Ouma’s eyes travel up to his face that’s half-buried into Momota’s chest and before he can think about it, he’s reaching over a sleeping Momota to brush his fingers against Saihara’s cheek. </p>
<p>He looks peaceful, Ouma thinks it’s a good look on him, when you ignore the exhaustion in his features. But it’s not like either of them looks any better than Saihara. Momota looks almost as drained as him, still asleep with a slightly parted mouth and Ouma snorts when he realizes that he is currently drooling on Saihara’s pillow. And if anyone asks him why he looks like he barely slept at all, he’ll tell them sleeping on a couch is not really ideal for getting any proper rest.</p>
<p>Just a tiny lie.</p>
<p>No one has to know he sat on the floor with his back against the bedroom door, listening to Saihara vent all night until the two of them fell asleep and then silently slipped into the bed.</p>
<p>He pulls his hand back as an idea crosses his mind and he grabs Momota’s phone from the nightstand. Saihara doesn’t set up his own alarms since he sleeps through them anyway and he’s always woken up by either Momota or Ouma after Momota’s alarm goes off. Momota usually gives him a gentle nudge or kisses across his face to wake him up, Ouma opts for throwing himself onto the bed with all the force he can muster. </p>
<p>The reminder of an alarm set to ring in 42 minutes stares at Ouma once he unlocks the phone and he turns the alarm off. He knows their schedules, neither of them has too many classes today. He doesn’t like the idea of Saihara having to wake up and go through his day in his current state so he decides missing a class or two won’t hurt much.</p>
<p>He sets the phone down. He thinks of what to say once Momota is awake and angry about the alarm as he climbs back into the bed. It’s payback, he’ll say, payback for leaving me on the couch the whole night without a single blanket. And if they end up with Momota chasing him around the house once again, that’s fine. </p>
<p>After all, Ouma has always been good at running away.</p>
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